How many direct reports should/could an engineering manager have? It depends

Question

Currently a senior dev and being offered a chance to move into an Engineering Manager position focusing on personnel. Reading the web, it seems that some say 5-7 is the max and others have 30-40 under them, but manage with a lighter touch.

We have a structure of teams of 4-6 (usually a product manager, a QA or two, a dev or two and a technical lead). There are 6 teams at present. The company is keen to keep the high-performing tech leads away from day-to-day personnel management and have them focus on technical guidance and leadership - which is fine. However, it seems a bit daunting to take on board approx 20-30 people with 1:1s, career development planning, pastoral care, calendar management and many other things besides, much of which will be measured for success by senior management using various metrics (some of them intangible, eg. happiness/harmony).

Knowing that the devs like to be left for good chunks of the day to develop and not wanting to over-meeting them at first, my plan is to have 1:1s every fortnight for 15 minutes of focused time, with longer meetings set up where necessary following the 1:1. This roughly means 7-8 hours of 1:1s spread over 10 work days which doesn't seem that onerous to me as a commitment. I realise there will also be preparation/notes post meeting taking up more time, but does that seem feasible or am I being totally naïve here?

Answer 1

I'm an EM and I've ranged from 12 - 17 reports. I'm skeptical that you can do as much as you want for 30 people.

First, 15 minutes is really short for a quality 1-1. I allow 30 minutes and occasionally those are rushed. (Most range between 10-20 minutes). Scheduling longer as needed isn't as feasible as it sounds -- it ruins the flow when you suddenly have to move to another meeting and that connection you were having is lost. You'll also need to allow time for prep for these meetings -- with this many reports you need lots of notes, which means writing afterwards and looking up notes before. 1-1s are not a checkbox to tick off -- it's the time to make a real, personal connection with your reports, and that takes time.

You also need to allow time for meeting with people above you and for actually doing things that come from these meetings. And don't discount the time for context shifting -- if you're bouncing from meeting to meeting with no down time in between you'll quickly get exhausted.

I'm not saying you can't manage 20-30 people, just saying that the more people you have the more superficial that management needs to be. Definitely push for getting this number split in half -- both your reports and the company will reap the rewards.